No Progress On The State Budget

March 29, 1992

The Legislature's Appropriations Committee produced a budget last week, with a little more than one-third of the regular session remaining. But so many policy questions were left unanswered that any progress is illusory. The disputes involve hundreds of millions of dollars.

Is the Legislature headed toward another chaotic summer of deadlock -- the certain route to political suicide? You'd think lawmakers would prefer consensus and adjournment on time to a repeat of last year's brawling.

The problem is that Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. has proposed deep spending cuts that many legislators have now decided they don't want to make -- just as many in 1991 were reluctant to enact an income tax.

But the governor's medicine, however bitter, is as necessary now as it was then. Taxpayers can't afford another tax increase after huge hikes the past two years, and more heavy borrowing is not fiscally responsible. That's why Mr. Weicker recommended cutting $1.1 billion from the amount it would take in the fiscal year beginning July 1 to keep state services operating at the current level.

When the governor unveiled his budget in early February, Republican leaders reacted positively, saying that Mr. Weicker was adopting some of the spending cuts and programmatic reforms that they had championed for years.

Many Democrats also gave a thumbs-up to the executive's budget, at least in general terms. Privately, some of them said the Democrats should simply pass the governor's plan and go home on time, letting him take the political heat for the pain caused by deep cuts.

Regardless of their motivations, the lawmakers' initial reaction -- to go along with the magnitude of the reductions in spending growth advocated by Mr. Weicker -- was responsible. It was a good budget plan for bad times.

Now the Democrats are wavering. The committee approved a budget with a bottom line that is $24 million less than Mr. Weicker's $8 billion budget, but members of the majority party are still hung up over such expensive issues as welfare and education grants. The committee document might be altered before it reaches the floor --

and then there's no guarantee of consensus. Republicans are not pleased with some of the budget decisions that Democrats could agree to.

Some changes the committee made in Mr. Weicker's proposal are just plain wrong, most notably a plan to delete $33 million from the money the governor added to the correction budget. A reduction would mean postponing the opening of some or all of three new prisons.

Every line in Mr. Weicker's budget is not inviolable, but, in all, it is reasonable and realistic for the times. The governor, although decrying budget gimmicks and borrowing, has engaged in some himself. But that doesn't mean that the Legislature should think up new gimmicks or expand borrowing to pay for the items it hates to cut. That would be doing business in the profligate way it did in flush times.

Lawmakers should swallow hard and pass a budget along the lines of Mr. Weicker's and adjourn by the deadline